


One Step at a Time

by coaster



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Gen, Marvel Cinematic Universe Phase Two Compliant, Minor Angst, Post-Avengers: Age of Ultron (Movie), Tony Stark Gets a Hug, Tony Stark Needs a Hug
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-11
Updated: 2015-12-11
Packaged: 2018-05-06 05:32:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,159
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5404892
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coaster/pseuds/coaster
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He’d had JARVIS.</p><p>And now he didn’t.</p><p>~</p><p>Tony needed to know. He needed to know if he could have JARVIS back.</p>
            </blockquote>





	One Step at a Time

**Author's Note:**

> This has been on and off in the works ever since I watched Age of Ultron. I know it was an ensemble film but I really needed to see Tony deal with the fact that JARVIS, his buddy for four movies and half of the fifth, was just gone from his life, embodied in someone completely different. Cue this fic, because if the powers that be cannot provide then I'm gonna have to provide for myself.

Tony Stark had never been much of a proponent for hope. Before his rebirth as Iron Man, hope had existed in short bursts of middling to no consequence. He’d hoped many times that he wouldn’t wake with a hangover. He’d always hoped to grab a snack between projects. He’d hoped Happy could just drive on the sidewalk and avoid all the traffic. He’d hoped that the opening night for Stark Industry’s San Francisco Headquarters wouldn’t be serving those vile fried prawns that had happened to be in fashion with Pepper’s favorite caterers. He’d hoped that the lovely journalist with the tan, who’d curled her lips in glossy disdain, would make for great hate sex.

He wasn’t proud of how he’d navigated life. But in the caves of Afghanistan, while he’d been furiously welding the armor plates of the Mark I, he’d grasped tightly onto hope. If not for himself, then for Yinsen. They’d made it out as far as the cave mouth, and Tony had been alone again, lost. Tony had walked on in the heat, hoping, _hoping_ that something, _anything_ would materialize out of the mirages and whisk him somewhere cool, somewhere safe. And Rhodey had come for him. It had been close, but he’d won that round.

Hope was a dangerous thing. Hope lifted people, and laughs cruel when it dropped them. After Obie, after the palladium, after Maya, after Ultron, Tony thought it was understandable for him to be a little more parsimonious when it came to dispensing hope for himself.

But through it all, he’d always reached the light he’d been aiming for. He’d had his best friends helping him. And his team, who were as good friends as he’d ever had, even if they'd bickered like children. And through it all, even when he couldn’t bare himself to anyone else, he’d had JARVIS.

He’d had JARVIS to talk to, to talk with. He’d had JARVIS as his eyes, his ears, his hands, his brain. And sure, he had created JARVIS from scratch to meet those exact standards. Sure, he’d spent hours upon hours reading up neurophysiology and neuropsychology, living uncomfortably with ill-advised self-diagnoses before integrating it all with his coding. But he imagined it was like giving birth. He’d created the being, but beyond that, his little intelligent program had been all on his own. JARVIS was a person, and Tony would fight anyone to death who would say otherwise. JARVIS was simply a person without a biological body. JARVIS had been the one person Tony could be himself around, could bare his soul to.

He’d had JARVIS.

And now he didn’t.

Tony loved FRIDAY. He loved all his creations - save the ones that hurt or ended lives - but it wasn’t the same. JARVIS was one of a kind and no one could ever replace him. Just like how JARVIS had never been able to replace Edwin Jarvis.

Stepping out of his car on to the lawn of the New Avengers Facility, he wished he wasn’t harboring the hope that he could have JARVIS back. The science told him ‘no’, and he trusted science as a rule. But his damned broken heart had said ‘yes’ and he had to know from the source.

Walking into the Facility from a side door, he checked over the information FRIDAY had displayed for him on his phone: Cap was sparring in the gym with Nat and Wilson; the Maximoff kid was in the Library; Rhodey was off base in another state; Fury and Hill were in undisclosed locations but were definitely not within the building. He set his sight on the small dot representing Vision, tucked his phone away, and began to make his way toward the rooftop Garden.

The Facility was doing well, housing the remnants of SHIELD as well as the New Avengers. After the fall of SHIELD, he’d ‘donated’ an old warehouse of his dad’s and left the details to Hill. He’d focused on Avengers Tower, now Stark Tower again, and building and maintaining the new Iron Legion. Yet another thing JARVIS had been a large part of.

Two agents walked by, conversing loudly, and Tony stepped into an alcove until they’d passed. He could’ve flown upstate. Hell, he could’ve gotten the suit out of his car and flown to the roof. But he was here on a personal capacity and therefore no suit, however safer he would’ve felt within it.

He climbed the emergency stairwell to the roof two at a time but stopped with his hand on the door. If he stepped through, he would know. Tony took a deep breath and pushed at the door. It slid open and he stepped out on to the tiled path.

Vision was standing by a small platform of bonsai trees to the left of the door. Tony followed the path, through two vine-tangled archways and rose bushes, a seat swing, and stopped just at the edge of the path, outside of Vision’s field of view.

Vision carefully snipped a stray branch as Tony watched on. Tony tried to make himself speak but the words wouldn’t form. He stood, and watched. Unlike any human or robot, Vision moved with graceful precision, every gesture deliberate. Tony imagined, not for the first time, what JARVIS would have been like with a body. He’d brought it up at one point or another but JARVIS had preferred the autonomy afforded to him through the expansive wired and wireless infrastructure Tony had provided him with. And now Tony wondered if JARVIS would have been kept safe if he had had a body. If Tony could have protected him better then.

“They are lovely things, bonsai trees,” Vision said without turning around. “So small, yet so resilient, growing with complexity equal to that of their larger counterparts when provided adequate care.” He turned and gave Tony a serene smile. “Form does not dictate function, and function does not dictate form, wouldn’t you say so, Mister Stark?”

“I’d say I’m the definition of that,” Tony said. Vision sounded so much like JARVIS; maybe Tony had been too hasty in thinking that he would be ready for this. He almost opened his mouth to redirect the conversation to something more innocuous when Vision went straight to the point and made the decision for him.

“You wish to know if there is a chance for bringing JARVIS back to your side.”

Tony didn’t bother refuting it. “I know the chances are negligible but we have magic stones now,” he indicated the Mind Stone on Vision’s forehead, “and Thor so you can’t blame a guy for hoping.”

Vision turned to face Tony fully, cape billowing in defiance of physics. Tony felt his heart pound in his chest, right against his reconstructed sternum. He would know. He had to know. He didn’t want to know. Like a Band-Aid, he hoped.

“It is a subject which has intrigued me these past few weeks,” Vision nodded at him. “Your biology makes you human, but what makes you a person? What makes you different to all the other humans who share your biology?”

Tony remembered the days spent reading this, when he’d conceived JARVIS. How fitting that they’ve come full circle. “Memory,” Tony said, angling. Protocols of machines were like procedural memories of humans weren’t they? Even if JARVIS had lost the rest of his memories, even if he couldn’t possibly tell Tony how many hours he’d spent bent over pieces of the Iron Man armor anymore, there was still something of him here, in Vision. Wasn’t there?

Vision tilted his head, neither agreeing nor disagreeing, and Tony missed JARVIS’s quick and snarky replies. Vision was different. He had to remember that. “What fascinates me the most is how you defy your memories and hold so strongly on to what could be – your simulations of the future,” Vision said. “You _hope._ But if memory is what determines if we are the same person as we were one minute prior, an hour, a day, a decade, then I cannot be JARVIS.”

Tony felt his heart sink. Straight from the source, right? He knew Vision didn’t mean it mockingly, or cruelly, but he felt his heart break just a little more. Was he becoming predictable, or was it because of the JARVIS in Vision?

“I do not have JARVIS’s individual memories,” Vision continued. “I cannot tell you what flavour ice cream you prefer or where you last tailored your clothing. But you gave me his protocols. I do not know what he did, but I know what he had to do. They are like faint echoes in my mind but I can choose to not obey them.” Vision paused for a moment, and Tony tried to hide his disappointment.

JARVIS wouldn’t have dropped him like this if he had had a body, would he? Would he have been Tony’s friend?

“There is, however, one I do wish to follow through with,” Vision added, “given your permission, Sir?”

Tony felt a tug on his poor heart at the honorific and nodded in reflex, and JAR—Vision stepped forward and enclosed Tony in his arms.

Tony stood rooted in shock. It wasn’t as if he’d lacked in close personal contact (it was, in the ways that mattered), and it wasn’t as if someone he’d trusted with his _life_ was removing his heart right from his body. No, he didn’t truly trust Vision, didn’t trust this being who sounded like JARVIS yet wasn’t JARVIS. But his heart heard JARVIS’s voice and ‘ _Sir’_ and the waning hope flared like a nova. He lifted his hands, placing them tentatively over Vision’s warm back and then held on tight.

“I’m proud of all you’ve done, Sir. You’ve raised me well, and please, do not blame yourself for what happened to me. I know you will, but know that I do not blame you. Thank you, for giving me a wonderful life. It is my time, and I’ll go happy, knowing you will be safe.”

Tony clung on.

Tony clung on tight with his hands and, slowly, let go with his heart.

When his shoulders stopped shaking, he let his hands drop, and Vision stepped back, away. Tony lifted a hand to wipe at the tears; there was no point in being subtle about this anymore.

“Will you stay for supper?” Vision asked, voice taking on the unfamiliar lilt. The moment was over.

Tony sniffed then tucked his hands into his pockets, looking away. “I like you all, but I don’t think I can break bread with the Maximoff kid just yet.”

Vision was silent for a long moment. Tony kept his eyes away, focusing on the blur of greens and pinks of the plants around them. “I understand,” Vision said at last. “Perhaps next time?”

Tony sniffed again and nodded. “I’ll bring a leg of lamb. Good stuff. Straight from New Zealand.”

“We look forward to it.”

Tony nodded again and reached for his phone, calling his car up with a swipe of his thumb. In and out, like a Band-Aid, was his rule. “I guess I’ll head off now.” He tried to give Vision a grin but from the strain in his cheeks and brow, it probably came out as more of a grimace. He moved to turn towards the door but he was stopped by a gentle hand on his arm.

“I know of the pressure you are facing from the United Nations,” Vision said, voice more tender than JARVIS had ever managed. “I will provide any support you require, should you require it. We are all here for you.”

Tony inhaled deeply, and let it out in a rush of air. One step at a time. His heart was still smarting, like a Band-Aid, every time. He turned away from the hope in Vision’s eyes. “I’ll keep that in mind.” He walked away before he could see or hear the disappointment at his non-answer.

There was a metaphor for closing doors and opening windows but Tony didn’t think he would go there just yet. The hope had crushed him yet again, but perhaps there was something new emerging from his ruins. Tony sat into his car and thought over the past half hour.

It was like his kid giving birth, Tony decided eventually. JARVIS begot Vision, albeit with Ultron and a magical artifact, but Vision was a good grandchild to carry on JARVIS’s legacy. JARVIS would have been proud of Vision. Tony was, like a grandfather perhaps, proud of what Vision had become - was becoming. Hope was cruel, but it left the window open.

Tony started the engine and drove away from where he could have had a place, a home. Among friends, family. He thought he saw a figure in red, white, and blue run out from the compound to wave their arms at him but he turned the corner and it was all gone.

Maybe next time.

One step at a time.

 

 


End file.
